Frank Wimberley in an undated picture (all pictures courtesy Berry Campbell Gallery)
Final winter, from his residence in Corona, Queens, then-98-year-old artist Frank Wimberley puzzled collectively a collage. The ensuing work is an amalgamation of shorn paper laid upon museum board. A few of these sheets are layered with thick, textured acrylic brush strokes in moody shades; a vivid streak of orange passes by way of the composition, whereas a round portal grounds it. Quickly after completion, “Untitled” (2025) went on view in Frank Wimberley: Earlier than Extra After Much less at Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea, showcasing his work, collages, and sculptures spanning 1982 to 2025. The collage was, within the phrases of his spouse, Juanita Wimberley, “the first one to go.” Earlier than Extra After Much less marked a milestone for the artist: a retrospective have a look at a long time of artmaking. “I was looking at work that I had done over the years,” he mirrored in an interview with me in February. “It’s like looking at your life.”
Wimberley died earlier this month, at age 99. His loss of life was introduced by Berry Campbell Gallery, which represented him. “ I was always sort of floored at how his paintings were so sophisticated and strong, but delicate at the same time,” Christine Berry, one of many gallery’s co-directors, stated in an interview with me in September.
Frank Wimberley, ” acrylic, blended media, and collage on museum board
Born in Pleasantville, New Jersey, in 1926, Wimberley’s ardour for artwork was nurtured in childhood by his mom, a ceramicist and pianist who would take him to see jazz orchestra performances, and his father, who gifted him his first instrument, a trumpet. Within the late Forties, Wimberley attended Howard College, the place he studied artwork below the likes of James Amos Porter and Lois Mailou Jones, and met Juanita. He left this system after two years to independently pursue artwork, making work throughout the day and dealing nights with america Put up Workplace whereas the couple raised their son, Walden Wimberley.
The artist’s first solo exhibitions befell in 1973, at what’s now the African American Museum of Nassau County in Hempstead and Acts of Artwork in Manhattan. He went on to current work in exhibitions at June Kelly Gallery, Guild Corridor, Spanierman Gallery, and Arts Middle at Duck Creek, amongst others, together with the not too long ago closed With Ardour and Goal on the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork.
He was influenced by and a part of the Summary Expressionist and Black Arts Actions, and established roots in New York Metropolis and Lengthy Island Arts communities. Within the Nineteen Sixties, the Wimberleys constructed a modernist residence in one in all a number of traditionally Black inlets within the village of Sag Harbor, New York; the abode was featured in a 1994 New York Occasions article and a 2020 profile on the neighborhoods. Within the early Seventies, Wimberley co-founded the Eastville Artists, a cohort of principally Black artists with ties to the area — together with Al Loving and Nanette Carter — and would finally change into a titan within the East Finish’s arts neighborhood. He was inducted into the Guild Corridor Academy of Arts in 2022 — the identical venue the place he confirmed alongside the Eastville Artists in 1979. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the island and is held within the assortment of the Parrish Artwork Museum in Watermill, the place he can be included in an exhibition on abstraction subsequent 12 months.
Frank Wimberley, “Blue Patch” (1998), collage and blended media on canvas
I met the Wimberleys close to the opening of Earlier than Extra After Much less, once they shared the saga of his longtime inventive pursuits. A nonagenarian nonetheless gripped with inventive impulse, he defined the visions of artworks he nonetheless dreamt of creating, typically waking him up within the night time, enlivened with inventive vitality. Into his last 12 months, Frank Wimberley was nonetheless ripping, tearing, pasting, and portray paper to create new worlds.
Jazz remained a significant affect for the artist. Portray and music had been symbiotic, feeding off each other of their mutual devotion to emotion and intangibility, to free expression. He smeared, streaked, and blended paints utilizing floppy brushes, wire, and pumice stone, working with acrylic paint for its rapid-drying high quality — he labored shortly, ending every work inside 24 hours, a nod to the speedy improvisation of jazz. “I wanted to get to a solution as soon as possible, perhaps that night or the next morning,” he defined. He was additionally a sculptor, and typically included surfeit sawdust from his woodworking into his paint to complement its texture on the linen canvases.
This textural enterprise, he stated, was partly impressed by Cubist Pablo Picasso’s use of experimental supplies like sand. Picasso, together with Summary Expressionist Willem de Kooning, served as bastions of inspiration as he developed his personal distinct language of abstraction and exploration. Works like “Senegal” (1990) — made from acrylic and collage on canvas over Masonite — exemplify his observe of blending media and constructing texture by way of thought of layers and removals. Colours barely break by way of a floor coated principally in off-white, suggesting a hotbed of exercise below the floor. Colours and textures are rendered simply out of attain, their presence and impression nonetheless peering by way of an exterior that appears minimal at first look, however reveals itself upon extended examination.
Frank Wimberley, “Louse Point Reverie” (1991), acrylic on canvas
Responding to Wimberley’s dedication to create artwork as he aged, Berry mused in September that persisting to make work all through one’s life “is the greatest gift an artist can have.” His life was marked by a devotion to experimentation and an pleasure for inventive risk. Talking on the catalyst that spurred him towards abstraction, Wimberley spoke fondly of his friendship with jazz large Miles Davis, an avid collector of his work. He branched into visible improvisation, he stated, as a result of he needed to do with paint and canvas what musicians like Davis and Charlie Parker did with their devices. “ I was trying to put myself on a level with those people, with the art,” he defined.
Wimberley referred to as his artworks “controlled accidents” — his visible language was deeply thought of however flowed freely, inviting surprises alongside the best way. Like a jazz composition, a Frank Wimberley work conjures emotion, pushes and tugs on the limits of a medium, evading restrictive {qualifications}. They unfold earlier than your eyes, providing rewards and revelations in alternate for shut trying.
